9 thoughts on “Dick Martin pick-up line”

I love funny pick-up lines. I have a terrible iPhone App from Mobilingua, which I see being used all over, which contains a rubric called “Plaudern + Flirten” (chatting and flirting). Interestingly, it includes separate lines for chatting up women and men.

Chatting up a woman:
Are you in a relationship?
Thanks, you’re a really interesting woman.
Very few women dance so sensuously as you (sic).

And approaching a man:
Thanks, you’re a real gentleman.
I noticed your hands, they’re very manly.
Are you married by any chance?

The app lets you translate the lines and reads them out to you in a deep robotic woman’s voice. Completely useless lines, of course !!! Except, perhaps, for the section on turning someone down:
No thanks, I don’t want any more to drink.
No thanks, I really don’t feel like it.
No, I don’t want to go home with you.

Yes, But I’m not sure I get the meaning of “cheeky” right : to me”cheeky” is quite nice and not a big deal at all, but it can be taken the wrong way, right?
Oh mon Dieu I didn’t know there were chatup lines applications for iPhones! those are pathetic! “are you in a relationship”?!! “very manly hands”!! how subtle!
A famous French one, “vous marinez chez vos harengs ?” to make fun of the cliché “vous habitez chez vos parents ?”

“Cheeky” is actually a very British word for naughty behavior and does mean that it can be taken the wrong way. But I actually agree, this one is quite harmless, so its “cheekiness” is only very slightly “naughty”. After all, this was the sixties, or very early 70s, and it was family TV. This was way before cable TV made the modern style of series possible!

Very funny, Alice, some people never get out from under their parents, so the phrase is actually quite fitting ^^ !
(The translation is something like “Do you marinate along with your herrings?”)

The Mobilingua app I’m talking about has phrases of all kinds meant for the traveller, in German and English, with audio. I’m always on the lookout for interesting little games and courses to learn English with, and this was an early one… not a good one!

The idea that something called a chat up line even existed and that i might have to master their use caused me so much angst as an adolescent in the conformity of suburban london that i didn’t really go on a date until i was safely in my twenties.

Merci Anne, this is very helpful! yes, you are right about the translation, but then the rhyming is lost with “vous habitez chez vos parents”… hard to translate jokes, even the bad ones!!
Chris, the very fact that there are “chat up lines” seems strange to me… don’t know how we would say this in French, apart from “draguer” and “la drague”, no such thing as “chat up lines”!

Although wikipedia is not totally to be trusted, i have for example contributed myself, it can be interesting to search a page in English (chat up line) and then select the other language option in the column on the left.
This gives the French phrases “phrases d’accroche” and “brise glace” – neither of which i’ve noticed any one use and the second looks like something different anyway.
There is also a link to examples – which i haven’t dared look at – scared it will provoke a crisis of suburban conformitis.http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pick-up_line